I think everyone should watch this.
2 Likes
Unfortunately there is no solution to this, unskilled labor is going away and not coming back. Those unskilled laborers will either have to get skilled or die off, that's how it works. I'm not making this a basic income thread but that is probably the idea some of the people in this thread see as a solution. We are not at that point yet.
2 Likes
I found very interesting YT comment on the video just above your post.
from where I see it, we have 4 possible outcomes.
1: Startrek: where you have perfectly functioning global communist society where scarcity no longer exist so money and wealth becomes obsolete.
2: Judge Dredd: Where the status quo remains and vast numbers of unemployed people live in a permanent underclass while the cybernetically and genetically enhanced elite live like gods.
3: Mad Max: Where the entire system breaks down because society cannot handle such radical technological development leading to war and revolutions all over the world.
4: The Matrix: Where machines totally take over and biological humans are just kept around as pets.
In the event that option 1 doesn't happen because of human greed. I would go for option 3.
currently i am trying to get myself financially into a position so i can get out of McDonald's and go back to school for programming. unfortunately since i work at McDonald's, there isn't a lot of money left at the end of the month for saving for school
1 Like
I don't eat fast food, but if I did this would make me uncomfortable. I want a human being to do this job. Not because I care about people having a fast food job, but simply because it's more comfortable for me to be serviced by another human being. We're social creatures, after all.
I'm probably not the only one who feels this way. And this is why I think that these jobs won't completely go away. It's a supply and demand thing. These jobs will simply become more "exclusive". There will be less of them, that's for sure. And it will count as an experience to go to a restaurant that employs real people. An experience that you'll have to pay extra for to feel special.
I see number 1 being impossible because of greed and humans being terrible in general.
Number 3 is most likely to be the outcome (and may happen during our lifetime), especially with the societal tension we've got today across the US and Europe.
This is gonna sound callous, but I'm with @kewldude007 on this one - we can scream "jawbs" all we want. Like it or not, these jobs are going to be phased out because they're repetitive jobs that can be done by the lowest common denominators of society. There is a lot of money to be saved for these companies by going to machines rather than people because human workers are expensive, they take time to train to be competent and efficient, and even afterwards they make mistakes. From a business perspective, it's a no-brainer, in fact it's a wonder they haven't been doing it for decades prior.
This is why they need to bring back trade schools and guilds by the dozens and encourage people to learn trades. People nowadays drive themselves into madness over getting a college degree that lands them in thousands or tens of thousands of dollars in debt afterwards. Getting a degree off of a McDonalds job is nigh impossible, but studying, training for and gaining qualifications and certs is far more doable. People just need the discipline and initiative to take that course.
4 Likes
Hey, I'm just saying, yea. No need to get riled up on my comments. I'm just pointing it out that its not the end of the world. People have always adopted to the changing world. And for those who don't, well I'm sorry to say but they're literally not going anywhere if they don't adopt.
I was thinking 10 years ago I couldn't imagine that people could actually make a living making videos online. Now see, a lot of people have these kinds of jobs that we couldn't imagine before. So what say, the next 5 to 10 years.
Also, the phrase "Survival of the fittest" still applies to everyone. So yea..
1 Like
They have been. The difference is that now, with the onset of the internet, all these people have a voice and certain political groups have picked up the plight of people they really don't care about in an attempt to garner votes. This has turned a natural process into a huge fight.
This is a really good idea. People look down on trade schools sometimes, but there's nothing substandard about a trade school.
I sorta see LUGs as a type of guild for geeks today, but maybe I'm just too much of a nerd to admit it.
3 Likes
Stay encouraged my friend. In your spare time, look at/try out some tutorials, be active in our CODE community there are plenty of videos too you can follow. The 'norm' of school / structured learning is old school. When you are good you are good.
Again. Stay encouraged. You will overcome soon enough.
Just copied the article 
I would go one step further than 'bringing back' trade schools (I went to one in '96-98), but actually teaching people how to provide the basics to life. Assuming air quality holds out for the next generation, people would be well served to be familiar with providing food, shelter, and fresh water. I am of the belief that most societies that disappeared in the past did so because they devalued farming and construction, to the point that when hard times hit not enough people knew how to survive in place. It was either mass exodus or theft and assault to stay alive.
Longtime listeners to CGP Grey's Hello Internet podcast would have heard his position on the mandatory teaching of certain things that are rarely ever put to use, such as foreign languages. I agree that teaching people about other cultures and being open minded to other people are good things, but very little of this seems to come from foreign languages, at least the way they are taught in schools. Teaching programming languages, or how to provide some basic needs would be substantially better skills than a language you never fully grasp and soon forget.
Getting over the hump from 'before widespread mechanization' to after will be hard for many people. A lot of people don't have the mental capacity to foresee things. Our society pushes people into 'buy, buy, buy!' and 'look at these ridiculously lavish lifestyles, here is how you can emulate it and go in to massive debt in the process.' If there were a stronger sense of urgency in our society saying 'millions of people are about to be seriously hating it, maybe you should do something about it' then perhaps more people would take notice and try to enable others to avoid such a fate.
3 Likes
This exactly.
@rockking a bit of advice if I may.
Let me put it this way: I don't have a degree. I have a job as a Cloud Systems Admin. I'm 23. I did odd jobs for people fixing their computers and supporting their small business. From there, I started getting "experience" to put on my resume. After that, it was smooth sailing (ish).
My point in sharing this isn't to brag or anything, more to say that it's possible to do well without a degree. I'm living proof of it. It just takes a bit more work and you need to work in a different method than you would have if you went to school.
The tech industry focuses more on evidence than on a little piece of paper saying "I jumped through these hoops." College isn't the Grand Filter it used to be, and while it's still a great thing and a valuable tool, people just don't immediately hire people with degrees anymore. (only exception is DoD)
Hope this helps.
Good point. If I understand it, we've already got a slight food shortage issue right now and it's going to only get worse.
In that case try to learn by yourself in your spare time. Going to school for programming is not always the best route especially if you are tight on money. Only go to university if your desired profession absolutely requires a degree. At Uni they basically expect you to learn everything by yourself while having to pay them £9000/year for doing nothing. I went to one and was extremely disappointed. The teachers are super lazy and teach fuck all. Some of them didn't even provide the learning material.
If you have to learn it all by yourself then you may as well do it at home for free or minimal cost of subscribing to Pluralsight.
2 Likes
You're right, particularly in other countries. In Japan, a lot of smaller restaurants have a meal ticket machine in the front, you hand the man your tickets and he sets off calling out what needs to be prepared. There's no cash register, the process is entirely streamlined, and everyone can focus on making the food.
I feel like in fact more often than not, people look down on trades. There's a mentality that somehow if you don't have a college degree, you won't be successful and/or are failure to society or family or yourself or whatever.
The conversation often goes like this:
Person: Oh, I've just been really stressed and depressed lately because I'm working three part time jobs to pay for college, and it's just so hard and so expensive and I don't know if it'll work out because debt, etc, etc...
Me: Okay, have you ever considered going into trade?
Person: Huh? What do you mean?
Me: Going to a trade school, getting some qualifications and skills and then joining the workforce that way. It can be far less expensive than a degree, and you will see the benefits much sooner.
Person: What sort of jobs can you get?
Me: Welder, plumber, carpenter, machinist, mechanic, electrician, heavy equipment operator, boilermaker, glass and metal technician, bearing mechanic, millwright, hoisting engineer, brick/concrete/stonemason, industrial painter...
The conversation usually ends there because the person hears those things and thinks "Oh, dirty, hard manual labor, I don't want to do those kinds of things," and they continue on their downward spiral. And I sit there going "Dude, do you not realize just how many jobs there are that you're not considering?"
It's the ultimate in self-destructive cases of having your cake and eating it too. It's an unfortunate self-imposed catch 22, you work a mindless job and hate your life but you won't consider alternatives because you absolutely must have that college degree.
edit: I realize that people have different situations and that this might grossly oversimplify or worse discount their issues with employment, but so often I find that people faced with this issue also have this kind of attitude.
Star Trek is the end game of us building so many robots that no one can work and then we just start shipping humans to other planets to repeat the same process. However cybernetics are happening right now as well so that can be a reality, even perhaps on the same time scale as star trek.
If you want option three, take a 90's pickup truck to Nevada desert. Boom, done.
2 Likes
I'll take a 90s RV out to the Nevada desert and make some dank kash money off of those diseases of boredom I've heard about, Breaking Bad style.
1 Like
i know the degree isn't required. i have already completed four years of university. one thing the second university i went to helped with the most was finding internships. almost every week i would get emails with about a dozen or so internship oppurtunities. i did apply for as many as i could but never got very far. mostly because while i was four year in, i wasnt going to be ready for graduation for several more years. i work full time and have split custody of my kids.
2 Likes
i am working on it. there was actually a project i helped with back in my first year at university that is still being used and i have been trying to bring it to the world of mobile. i am slowly getting the application server done now but its tedious. enjoyable, but tedious. as for overcoming soon enough, i actually change jobs in about a month to go do some truck driving. not glamorous either but be a good way to see some of the country and put away some money.
1 Like
Good time to listen to some audio books on Programming and the like. 
I can help you with that if you need it.
ha might have to do that. i do some programming on my own. as much as i can. i was able to get out of my second job at least so i have found more time lately to work on a personal project. which is nice. still kinda slow but its nice to do. i try to get one API method on it done a day